posted on Thursday, July 24, 2008 11:26 AM
by
Jeremy RVARC
Going Low-Car
From the
AdvanceChristiansburg blog comes good
thoughts about alternative transportation and kind words for RIDE Solutions:
If
we as a Town are to maintain our quality of life and sustainability as
a community, we must carefully consider the foregoing realities and
look into our future to see what we can do better and/or differently to
achieve these goals. And I’d say that a huge step in the right
direction is to be thinking more about a “Low-Car Diet.”
I
like his "food pyramid" analogy, placing bicycle/pedestrian mobility on
the bottom, with public transit and carpooling rising to the pinnacle.
Prioritizing pedestrian mobility not only creates safe transportation
options on foot and by bike, it radically changes how development
occurs: shorter trips between home and shopping/employment/recreation
centers, more green space, tighter communities, more mixed-use
development. In short, more sustainable.
Regarding transit and ridesharing, it's interesting to note that the
single largest contingent of commuter in the RIDE Solutions database is
that of Roanoke to NRV (and the reverse) drivers, highlighting the
connections between these two regions. The SmartWay is already
providing a transit option between the two that allows better use of
that commuting time, though as its popularity grows the need for
additional buses - and funding for buses and operating costs - will
grow, putting additional pressure on Valley Metro. Of course, we have
commuters coming and going all over the Roanoke and New River Valleys,
but no single commute path is shared by more people than the segment of
I-81 between the Salem Park and Ride and the Falling Branch Park and
Ride in Christiansburg.